Gordon Moore is not the only one who should take the blame for making capacity planning arguably the hardest job in the data center. There’s also Buckminster Fuller: in 1982, he posited the Knowledge Doubling Curve (which looks strikingly similar to Moore’s Law). Think of “human knowledge” as a book containing everything we know – how often does the book double in length? In 1900, human knowledge doubled every century. By the mid-1900s, it was doubling every 25 years. Today, human knowledge doubles every 13 months.

This accelerated pace of human knowledge development goes hand-in-hand with the accelerating pace of computing power. And both are equally responsible for making the job of capacity planning increasingly difficult. The only thing predictable about technological change is that it will continue to accelerate.